If you
purchase your internet service from Glasgow EPB, you should know that, by the
end of 2015, we plan some really big equipment upgrades and those upgrades will
open the door to even faster speeds for our service, and we hope to be able to
provide those faster speeds at the same rate you are already paying.

If you
purchase your cable television service from Glasgow EPB, there are also some
big changes coming. These changes are necessary to make room on Glasgow’s
broadband network for the more robust internet speeds we have planned. For some
of you, the upcoming change will mean that an old friend or two in the house –
I’m talking about any older televisions that do not have a digital tuner, may
not work as it is after November 1. But we do have a solution or two that
should make this transition easy.

We are about
to convert all of our old analog television channels to a digital format. That
means we can condense several channels into the space presently being used by
one channel, and we can use all of that freed up space to allow the internet
services to flourish. But, if you have a television without a set top box, and
if that television is old enough that it has no digital tuner, then you are
going to need a DTA box from us if you want to keep that television going. We
are going to rent them for $3 per month, but you also might want to just
upgrade to newer television technology and save yourself the extra $3 per
month. That decision is totally up to you.

If you have
any television that has a picture tube, then it almost certainly does not have
a digital tuner. If you have an older flat screen television (think pre-2008)
it probably doesn’t have a digital tuner either. Remember, this only matters if
you presently run a cable directly to your set without using one of the EPB
set-top boxes. If you have a box then none of this matters to you and
everything will keep working fine.

Everyone has
a full month to ponder this and decide how they want to proceed. We are running
both our digital lineup and the old analog lineup together now, so you can
start moving toward the DTA box or toward replacing your non-digital tuner set
any time. But remember, after November 1 the analog channels will disappear as
part of our work to upgrade the internet service, so make plans for your
changes during October. As always, if you have any questions about this matter,
please give us a call at 270-651-8341 or email Eddie Russell at eddie@glasgow-ky.com
or Facebook message us through our page at https://www.facebook.com/glasgowepb

8
comments:

This is still going to catch a lot of older people off guard. Ones who don't read past the part where internet speeds will increase and all the technical details. I would expect lots of calls on 11/1/15 that "My cable is not working".

I would highly suggest that you keep putting this information out there, maybe leading off with the specifics that "Your older (Pre-2008 or whatever) TV will cease to work without a box of some sort after November 1 on EPB cable system." This was the first time I had heard of it and I am on the net, have epb email, like the facebook page, etc. The majority of info recently has been about getting EPB electric portal account to monitor electric usage and how the bills will be changing.

You may also mention another choice is that they can purchase their own DTA box rather than renting since they are available and are not coded or addressable or whatever by EPB.Good Luck Guys.

Thanks Chuck, you make a number of excellent points. We are going to pull out all of the stops in trying to get this information out. If our 2015 plans had gone as we made them this time last year, this conversion would have been done in May. However, our technology vendors spent several months getting all the pieces to live peacefully with each other and we are way behind. Now the digital conversion is happening at the same time as the electric rate change, and we did not want that.

We are starting to pull a few analogs down already and replace them with a screen that says something like, if you are seeing this you are still using analog tuner, please autoprogram and have your television look for the digital replacements, if you don't see them, call us for help. We hope that will fill in the gaps of communication via FB, email, etc.

Folks can buy their own DTA, but it won't have the i-Guide. We have to license that to provide it to the DTAs, so many will want to rent them from us for that. Otherwise, if that isn't an issue, we are fine with folks getting their own.

Chris, our plans are to concentrate on making a significant upgrade to the upload speeds. The exact new speeds and timing are not firm yet, because we have a lot of work to do in finally retiring our analog cable channels, getting the new cable modem termination system installed, tested, and integrated into our network, and conducting testing of speeds in a variety of our nodes.

The targeted time is the first of the year or thereabouts. We will keep everyone posted on the specifics as they reveal themselves through our testing.

We went from a functioning system to unreliable HD tv and unpredictable internet.

TV: 500 no longer indicates HD; 510, which is a good PBS station, is not HD anymore. Trying to record a program for later viewing results in intermittent loss of audio, picture freezing, and square spots.

Internet: Frequent slow speeds, or unable to connect, or total loss of signal. Sometimes (rarely) it is very fast, so I do not think the problem is with my router.

We live in the northwestern part of the city, Longhunters and Lexington. Perhaps that is part of the problem. Hope you can get things fixed soon.

We are very sorry for all of the inconveniences and poor service results that many are encountering relative to our digital conversion. These issues are a lot like the construction on the Interstate highways. Right now our network is littered with the digital equivalent of miles and miles of orange barrels and temporary lanes. Like a roadway construction project, it is maddening during construction, but when it is done everyone will enjoy much smoother travel. That is the place we are in on our broadband network as well.

We have had to slow everything down while we attempt to help hundreds of our customers adapt to the new digital lineup. We really underestimated the number of old televisions and the number of folks that would need one-on-one help in getting their televisions reprogrammed. We really needed a better crystal ball. As a result, we have not completed the conversion and turned off all of the analogs. That means that a lot of other traffic is squeezed down to narrow lanes and the speed limit is reduced.